In the vehemence of youth, Elizabeth Bennet is persuaded that years of happiness—supposing they should ever come—could not make Jane and her amends for moments of such painful confusion. The first wish of her heart, Elizabeth declares to herself, is never more to be in the company of either of the gentlemen again. “Let me never see either one or the other again.”
Yet Jane Austen remarks with quiet fun, in the very next sentence, the misery for which years of happiness were to offer no compensation received material relief when Elizabeth was able to observe how speedily Bingley’s admiration for her sister was reviving in her presence. No doubt, also, Elizabeth derived some pleasure from the fact that both visitors engaged themselves to dine at Longbourn, on Mrs. Bennet’s eager invitation.
“Mrs. Bennet had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine that day, but though she always kept a good table she did not think anything less than two courses[17] could be good enough for a man on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had £10,000 a year.”
After the visitors are gone, Elizabeth asks herself again, “If he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent, why did he come at all?”
The dinner brings no satisfaction and enlightenment where Elizabeth’s private affairs are concerned. Bingley, no doubt, is renewing his attentions to Jane beyond the possibility of mistake, so that Mrs. Bennet may be almost excused for fully expecting him to come and propose next day; though the sensible and amiable Jane still nervously assures herself and her sister Elizabeth that any apparent partiality to her only proceeds from Bingley’s pleasing manners; and that, as for herself, she has become most desirably and comfortably indifferent with regard to his sentiments. But Darcy at the dinner-table is entirely separated from Elizabeth, and seated at the right hand of Mrs. Bennet, with whom he only exchanges an occasional formal word. In the drawing-room he does show an inclination to stand by Elizabeth, at the table where she and Jane are making tea and coffee, in the old, pretty, genial fashion; but the mere accident of the ladies of the party gathering about the table, and of a girl moving closer to Elizabeth with the stage whisper, “The men shan’t come and part us, I am determined; we want none of them, do we?” is sufficient to cause him to walk away. His tongue may have been tied, and yet his eyes might have spoken; but as far as Elizabeth could discern he looked as much and as earnestly at Jane as at herself, both on this occasion and on that of his call. It is all a tormenting puzzle.
V.
Bingley calls again without his friend, announcing that Darcy has gone to London, but will return to Netherfield in ten days. From this date Bingley’s wooing thrives apace. He makes daily engagements to shoot, or dine, or sup at Longbourn.
Mrs. Bennet practises the most transparent manœuvres to leave him alone with Jane, so that he may have the opportunity of saying “Barkis is willin’,” or some equivalent phrase, since Barkis had not yet made his model proposal. For a short space Jane and Elizabeth defeat these arrangements.
At last, one evening when Elizabeth has gone out of the room to write a letter, believing that all the others, including Bingley, are safely seated at cards, the indefatigable matchmaker contrives to dissolve the party, sends Mary to her piano, and carries away Kitty to sit with her mother in her dressing-room, while Mr. Bennet is, as usual, ensconced in his library. Elizabeth, returning to the drawing-room, where she expects to find the family, discovers that her mother has been too ingenious for her. On opening the door she perceives her sister and Bingley standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in earnest conversation, and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of both, as they hastily turn and move away from each other, would have told all. There is a momentary awkwardness, till Bingley leaves the room to seek Mr. Bennet, when Jane is ready to proclaim herself the happiest girl in the world.
Elizabeth smiles at the rapidity and ease with which an affair that has cost them so much suspense and anxiety is finally settled. “And this,” she says to herself, “is the end of all his friend’s anxious circumspection, of all his sister’s falsehood and contrivance,—the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end.”